Bergey Windpower News

American Electric Power Installs Bergey Wind Turbines and Puts Their Performance on the Web

 April 22, 2000

American Electric Power (AEP), one of America's largest utilities and a major operator of coal power plants, is in the process of installing five Bergey 10 kW turbines at AEP facilities in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Virginia, and West Virginia.  Each of the systems is connected to the AEP power grid using the new Bergey GridTek 10 power processor and is instrumented for power, wind speed, and rotor speed.  Using an AEP developed data monitoring product, the Datapult, AEP is putting real-time performance data and archived historical performance data on the web.  We believe this to be the first instance of web accessible real-time performance monitoring of small wind systems.

The first system under AEP's "Learning from Wind" program is now on-line at the AEP Dolan Laboratory in Groveport, Ohio.  The BWC Excel-S wind turbine, with the black "Extra-Stiff" blade option, is installed on a 30 meter (100 ft) guyed lattice tower.  The system was installed by an AEP line-crew.  A good overview of the project is provided by an article from the April 21st edition of the "Wind Energy Weekly", published by the American Wind Energy Association - which you can read by clicking here:

Wind Energy Weekly Article

The following links will take you to the AEP web sites:

AEP "Learning from Wind" Program
Turbine Performance Monitoring Page
Real-Time Monitoring - Groveport, Ohio Site
AEP Homepage

As part of their effort to publicize the new "Learning from Wind" program, AEP included bill-stuffers on the program with the monthly bills sent to their 3.2 million customers in April.  The AEP web sites provide links to the Bergey Windpower web site so that their customers can get additional information on small wind systems and evaluate the feasibility of installing a system themselves.  The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) played a key role in helping AEP launch the new program.

"We are very pleased to have this opportunity to work with American Electric Power.  Their "Learning from Wind" program will introduce wind energy to millions of people and gives us all an engaging way to take a peek at the real-time performance of small wind systems. We hope this program will encourage other utilities around the country to try wind power in their service territory." notes Mike Bergey, president and CEO of Bergey Windpower Co.  

 
For further information, please contact:

   Steve Wilke, Customer Service, Bergey WindPower Co.

   T:  888-669-6178 (toll-free)    F: 405-364-2078    E-mail:  swilke@bergey.com